Older

by Jennifer Hartmann

“You know what?” Reed spun back around and stalked toward me, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Fuck it.” “Fuck it?” I blinked, spinning around to face him. “Fuck what?” “This. It’s stupid. You’re here, and I’m here, and we have history.” “Okay,” I breathed out. “I miss you.” My eyebrows hiked up, meeting my hairline. “I…miss you, too.” “Good. Have dinner with me tonight.” I went quiet. Oh.

Reed and I had ventured through the best and worst out of life. Love, pain, laughter, soul-bared intimacy, and the saddest goodbye. But there was one thing we’d never done before. Never got to experience. Something so simple, so common, the idea of it stole the breath from my lungs. A date.

“I know. I’ve just always wanted to do this.” “Do what?” He reached out and clasped my hand, linking our fingers together. “Hold your hand in public.”

“Flowers. Hand-holding. A long walk on the beach.” I bit down on my lip. “This feels like a date, Reed.” He took my hand again and ushered me forward. “It’s just a day.” Our arms swung with levity, the dark clouds fading into clearer skies. “A really good day.”

“I take a lot of pictures now. I have a shoebox full of them. I plan to mail them all to you one day.” “What?” I blinked away tears, a watery smile blooming. “Reed…” “It keeps you close. Like you’re right there with me, pressing the button.”

I was at home again. Not in Illinois, but in Reed’s glittering galaxy.

A comet landing in the arms of its favorite star.

“This was all I wanted tonight, Halley. Just this. Something we never got to experience.” His words were warm honey against my ear. “Everything between us was built upon respect and genuine connection, but it was only able to be harnessed in the physical sense. Behind closed doors. Kept in the shadows.” Reed slid a palm up and down my spine, his thumb grazing the zipper of my dress. “It killed me that you left, and we never got this. Not once.”

Public affection. Transparent love, out in the open.

The morning glories had slipped from my ear, now splattered at our feet in broken buds. Mourning. Glory. Both bleeding together with despair.

“I love you.” Reed tried in vain to erase my tear stains with his desperate kisses. But they’d carved holes. Left scars. “I love you, Halley,” he gritted out. “I’ll never stop.”

All I could do was wait. Reed had given me a lifeline. But I wanted a lifetime.

“But easy love is overrated. Hard love means you have to fight, and when you’re fighting, it means you have something worth fighting for. And that’s beautiful. That’s everything.”

“You were choosing her.” I choked on my breath. Stared at my daughter with devastation carved across my face. I’d made a knee-jerk decision in that moment, and I’d chosen to protect Halley’s heart over my daughter’s, believing so entirely that Tara would understand one day. Forgive me. Use the tools and wisdom she’d acquired from a privileged, love-drenched life to heal her wounds. Halley had never had that. She’d come from nothing, and my own selfish decisions had left her with nothing but packed bags and a daunting, unknown future. But I hadn’t known the weight of Tara’s trauma. Her own burdens that haunted her. Her pain. In hindsight, I could have done something differently. Tried to find the balance in disorder. Thought harder, fought harder. Maybe I could have saved them both from the damaging repercussions of my actions.

But in the game of forbidden love, someone always lost. I just never thought it would be all of us.

“Tell me how to fix this.” Tara swiped away the remnants of her sorrow and straightened her stance. “I don’t know, Dad. This isn’t my fourth-grade science project. You can’t just run to the store when the glue runs out and save the day.” “There has to be something.” My words bled with rawness. With pleading. “You’re my little girl.” “I’ll always be your little girl.” Tara gathered her purse from the couch and breezed past me, muttering a final statement over her shoulder that twisted the blade in my chest, all the way through. “And you’ll always be the man who broke my heart.”

I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of. The truth? Yeah, that was it. I was content living with my anger, trapped between self-constructed walls. It felt safer than opening myself up to soul-crushing epiphanies. I wasn’t built for that sort of thing.

And then there was a photo of just my dad. Sitting on a park bench, his hair caught in a breeze. Bones the Beanie Baby was a blur clutched in his hand, partially cut off in the frame. He was looking at the camera with the barest smile, his eyes as close to sparkling as I’d ever seen them. Looking right at Halley. The photo was rimmed with a heart in blue Sharpie, and beside it, three words bled into the cardstock: He sees me.

I’d painted my father a monster in my mind, and he hadn’t steered me any differently. Maybe he was waiting for me to see the truth. Words were useless when falling on deaf ears.

“Forgiveness comes a lot easier when you’ve had practice. I spent years learning to forgive myself. I was the betrayer once. I was the enemy. Life is fragile, choices are reckless, and forgiveness is always hard-fought. Your father isn’t perfect, and neither am I. Neither are you. Neither is Halley. Imperfections are what bind us together. Our common thread. We’re all capable of screwing up, but we’re all capable of forgiving, too. That’s what makes us stronger humans.”

I thought about the puzzle Dad and I had done, years back. The one with the gummed-up, crooked piece. That puzzle would never be perfect. It would never be exactly what I’d envisioned it to be. But it was still a finished puzzle, with every piece stitched together, just the way it was supposed to be. I would put the final piece into place. Imperfect. Flawed but complete. And then, finally… A new puzzle could begin.

He sees me. I did see her. From the moment my eyes had landed on the sad girl in the lake, staring out at a bleak, dark canvas of water, I had done more than notice her. I’d seen her pain. Her misdirection. Her hopelessness. I’d felt it. She’d seeped inside of me and never left.

Still smiling, he took a seat along the shoreline, drawing his knees up as his fingers sifted through damp sand. “I’m having a strange sense of déjà vu.” I was having a heart attack.

“I’m saying this because it’s true,” he said. “Because I’ve been wanting to say it for over two years. Because I want it more than I want to breathe.”

“But we’re doomed. We’re not meant to be.” “Why?” “Because…Tara. She would never⁠—” “She gave me her blessing, Halley.”

My chin lifted, my eyes glued to him as I watched him plod into the water. An inch at a time. A new barrier crumbling between us. Shallow tide kissed the toes of his boots as he pressed forward, until the ocean swallowed his feet to the ankles. Both of us. Together. On the same side of the waterline.

I leaped at him. Water sprayed and splashed, mingling with my tears, as I launched myself into his arms and he caught me before we tipped backward and submerged, just for a moment. But I was already drowning. Sinking with shellshock and love so pure I couldn’t breathe.

His eyes glittered, the shadows gone for good. “You’re here to save me,” I breathed out. Warm lips brushed against mine as he whispered, “Maybe you’re here to save me.” Then he pulled me to my feet and spun me around, his smile engraved like it had been carved with rare diamonds. “Dance with me.” Laughter poured out of me as he twirled me in the water. I clung to him, my fingers digging into his arms, never wanting to let go. Never needing to let go. Reed hummed the chorus of Wonderwall, knowing there were no more walls standing between us. No more barricades. Just the open expanse of our shared horizon, painted with the colors of hard-fought love. We danced. We swayed beneath the moon, the stars, the vastness of possibility, water drenching our legs and a well-deserved future soaking our minds. He held me. He dipped me. And when he pulled me back to his chest, he murmured softly, “Do you like this song?” Tears of joy flooded me as I pressed my cheek to his chest and listened to every perfectly timed heartbeat, serenading precious melodies against my ear. “It’s my favorite.”

“I always knew we had that kind of love,” he told me, sighing with an air of solace. “What kind of love?” I was putty in his arms, a sagging, boneless heap. Reed swayed me gently, side to side. “The growing old together kind.”

Growing old with the one you love was an underrated treasure. Aging was frightening. Death was an ominous certainty that nipped at our ankles. But the journey to the other side of this life with someone who held your heart, who shared your dreams and fears, who knew you in the deepest corners of your soul, was a privilege beyond measure. It was a promise of companionship through every storm. And as Reed’s words encompassed me like a comforting embrace, I knew that no matter what lay ahead, we would face it together. I was good at doing hard things. And the hardest things in life gave way to the greatest rewards.